Maybe It'll Last This Time (But I'm Gonna' Love You)
by starkidpatronus
Summary: "Because, if you could love someone, and keep loving them, without being loved back . . . then that love had to be real. It hurt too much to be anything else." - Kill Me Softly, Sarah Cross You love him, but it's a little complicated. (Also has been posted on archiveofourown. See my profile for the link.)


**A/N:I KNOW I SHOULD BE WRITING "THE NOT-AT-ALL SMOOTH PATH" RIGHT NOW I'M SORRY READERS I'M GETTING TO IT; THIS JUST TOOK CONTROL OF ME**

 **Told in Second Person POV; I hope you can figure out who "you," is. Otherwise, I wrote it wrong.**  
 **Teen & Up rating for language and, kind of, themes.**  
 **What can I say; I love angst. That's pretty much all this is.**  
 **Title is taken from "Bright Lights and Cityscapes" by Sara Bareilles; beautiful song I highly recommend.**

You love him.

You love him when you're a scared and broken boy in need of a savior and he becomes the one you go to when you need to remember what it feels like to be alive. He is the one you've been searching for.

You love him when you're excited and nervous and you keep tapping your foot and wringing your hands and you need to stop because those are dead giveaways and he's going to notice and laugh at you but then none of that even matters when you finally see his smile in person and feel his arms around you and you realize that you're both shaking. He is real.

You love him when you notice that you've been smiling at him too brightly and laughing a little too loudly when you're with him and his name has become your favorite word to say and your name sounds like it's come home when he says it. He is now more than you ever intended him to be.

You love him when it's four AM and you've woken up in the middle of the night and you're in the kitchen, holding onto the counter for dear life while everything spins around you and you're trying so hard to be okay but you're just _not_ and then he walks in and asks what's wrong and you answer that it's nothing and you know he sees through you like glass, the way he always has, but he just nods and asks if you want a PB  & J and some milk and you say yes and you both sit on the sofa and eat silently and he keeps his foot touching yours to let you know you're not alone and eventually you come back to this world, back from the horrible abyss of the end of the universe where you'd been. He is always able to bring you back.

You love him when there's chaos and everything is happening all around the two of you and you look and see him standing there next to you and you feel warm at knowing that he always will be there. He is your one constant in life.

You love him when it's quiet and it's only the two of you and you start imagining unimaginable things, things like leaning in close and letting your breaths mingle with each other without ever having your lips touch his, things like telling him that he is more than the world; he is the sun, the moon, and all of the stars. He is all the cliché bullshit you swore you would never make him because you two are more than all that only you don't have the words to say what exactly you are so you fall back on those moronic clichés because they are the closest you can come to capturing him and what all of this is.

You love him when he teaches you that you don't always have to hide behind so many words, that sometimes the truth is enough, and that's what makes you hopeful. He is your inspiration, your safe haven, and your most dangerous trigger all at once.

You love him when the lines between the two of you are blurring more and more, and soon it feels like they don't exist anymore, like you are one single entity, but you know the boundaries are still there, because if they weren't, you would be able to lean forward and kiss him instead of just staring. Still. The intimacy of it all is wonderful. He is part of you.

You love him when you start thinking forbidden thoughts like maybe he feels it, too, and it all starts feeling real and suddenly so, so close. You start fearing that maybe he already knows what it means when your gaze lingers too long on him. You're a one-way window, and you wish you could see through him, too. He is as transparent as a brick wall, an enigma that you can never quite puzzle out.

You love him when you feel like giving up because he has someone and he's always been your someone but now he's someone else's someone and a person can only be one person's someone so now you have no one again and you're alone. You wish you could make him nothing, erase any memory, but he's always there. He is always there.

You love him when everyone is surprised at the announcement, and they're all smiling and congratulating him, but you can tell they're confused, and you are, too, and of course everyone except him would know, would have realized it by now, and you hate the pity in their eyes, you hate the way they all seem to be asking how you're holding up when they ask about your own romantic options, you hate all of it, and you hate how you still don't hate him. You want to hate him. He is too kind to hate, though, too completely oblivious.

You love him in lonely hours when your thoughts inevitably drift back to him, to the look on his face when he sees that she's texted him, and you know that look will never be reserved for you. He is happy, and that is what matters, you tell yourself over and over again.

You love him when you're tired and annoyed and envious and looking for a fight because you need to feel something again, something more than this terrible numbness you've now once again grown accustomed to because it hurts less than feeling all the horrid hurt but now it's not enough but you're not enough either and this whole thing is not enough and you hate how nothing is ever enough. And you're sorry, you're sorry, you're so _fucking_ sorry, and he's sorry, too, but sorry is not going to fix anything, especially when he has no idea what he's apologizing for, much less what you're apologizing for. He is owed ten thousand apologies for the mess you make him deal with.

You love him when you lose him, when he leaves. You knew it would end like this, not in an explosion but in a gentle simmer that eventually boiled over. You knew he would slip out, quietly making his exit from your life, almost as if trying to make it easier, as though he had never been there. The problem is that you _know_ he was there, and you don't remember how to live without him, and now you're broken again, and you don't think you can be fixed again, and fuck, you _knew_ it would end like this, the second you started counting his smiles, you _knew_ he would ruin you. He is gone.

You love him when everyone has apparently forgotten that this was supposed to be a temporary fling before you two finally got your shit together and realized what was staring you right in the face. When everyone is, instead of wondering how the hell this happened, congratulating him on the move and saying how happy he must be. When no one sees how you're falling apart. No one except for one who knows you almost as well, if not as intimately, as he does. He is the one whose eyes hold pity when people joke about you being all alone now, and you hate it, you hate all of it, you wish it would all go away, that you'd never met him, that none of this had ever happened, so that nothing would hurt now. Because it hurts, it hurts, it hurts so fucking much, and your mother once told you that things only hurt because they're important to us, and you hate that, too, because you wish he _wasn't_ important to you. He is still more important than anyone, though, no matter what you wish.

You love him even when your constant has been ripped away. He is no longer what you'd been so sure he was.

You love him when you know it's all just for appearances now, all the banter and the forced smiles; it all feels strained and off and definitively _wrong_ now, which is awful, because one of the things you'd always loved and one of the things that had saved you was the knowledge that everything would always be right with him, only now it's not. But you keep doing it for the fans and the money and the expectations. And he doesn't know it but you're still doing it because you like to indulge in the illusion for an hour at a time when you meet to film something that everything is the way it used to be. Everything has changed, though. He is good at pretending it hasn't.

You're not.

You love him when every damn day is nothing but pain and you learn how to live without, only you're not really living anymore, you're more on autopilot, and you learn what it's like to be made to feel like half by the person who once always made you feel whole. He is completely innocent in this one-sided heartbroken affair.

You love him when he shows up at what you both used to call, "our door," with tears in his eyes, asking why you'd never told him, and you're confused, because you don't know what he means, but then he says that he talked to PJ, and he knows, he _knows_ , and you want to die, you want it over, you want everything over—

You love him when he kisses you for the first time, reckless and tortured and _finally,_ with a layer of something sweeter underneath, like a summer's day. When he pulls away, he calls you, "Stupid, bloody stupid, stupid _idiot_ ," and he's right, but you can't quite bring yourself to care, because your smile and the tears in your eyes and the feeling of his hands bracing your face all prove to you that you've made it, you've made it, you've both finally made it _here_. He is here, and you're here, and you've both finally made it home.

 **A/N: There you have it, sports fans! Thank you for reading! Please leave feedback; it really motivates me! :D 3**


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